Joe Fassler

Features Editor, The New Food Economy

Joe Fassler is The New Food Economy’s Features Editor. A two-time finalist for the James Beard Foundation Award in Journalism (2011 and 2018), he covers the changing politics, economics, and culture of American food. In 2017, he was selected by Michael Pollan and Malia Wollan to be an 11th Hour Food and Farming Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley.

He’s also a longtime contributor to TheAtlantic.com, where he’s covered food, public health, and literary culture since 2010. For his Atlantic column, “By Heart,” authors—as well as musicians, filmmakers, and chefs—share the passages from literature that shaped their lives and work. The collection he edited, Light the Dark: Creativity, Inspiration, and the Artistic Process (Penguin, 2017), features favorites from the “By Heart” archive alongside new contributions from writers like Junot Díaz, Marilynne Robinson, Neil Gaiman, and Eileen Myles.